"The case for new cities"

via Congressman Jake Auchincloss & Jonathan Gruber: 

"It has become a truism that America can’t build anymore. Housing, infrastructure, and all nature of public goods are nearly impossible to build and irrationally expensive when we do so. The facts are stunning for such a diverse and dynamic economy. California is annually building 100,000 fewer homes than it needs to address affordability. A mile of subway costs two to seven times as much in American cities as in major European cities. One Chinese shipbuilder constructed more shipping tonnage in one year than America has since World War II. Georgia’s new nuclear power plant was seven years late and $17 billion over budget. And the list goes on.

"The case for new cities"

The solution seems straightforward: Cut the regulations that hold back builders. Over the decades, litigation and legislation have snowballed the number of veto points between the conception and execution of projects. Advocates on both the right and the left have argued against this vetocracy, cogently summarized in recent books like Abundance and Why Nothing Works.

That solution isn’t working fast or fully enough. Get-stuff-doners have been snipping away at the vetocracy for decades, with more frustration than success. In Massachusetts, for example, years of YIMBY effort culminated in the MBTA Communities Act, which compels higher-density zoning on sites near transit. Even the most optimistic projections, though, expect it to deliver no more than 40,000 units over the next decade for a state that needs a quarter million. 

These efforts deserve more support, but taken alone they won’t unlock enough building. This decade needs to deliver seven million units of housing and five Hoover Dams’ worth of nuclear power for America. We need radically new ideas."

Continue to read the joint essay ->  https://statesforum.org/journal/issue-1/the-case-for-new-cities/